


Something Profound

by DarylDixonGrimes



Series: Desus Holiday Bingo '17 [4]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Desus Holiday Bingo, Kisses, M/M, Poetry, Secret Santa, oops feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-16 22:41:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13063677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarylDixonGrimes/pseuds/DarylDixonGrimes
Summary: Daryl draws Jesus's name in the Hilltop Secret Santa. Feelings ensue.





	Something Profound

**Author's Note:**

> For the Desus Holiday Bingo "presents" square.

To Daryl, the glass jar full of torn paper feels like a den of vipers.

On each strip of yellow-white Maggie and Enid have written a name. It’s a classic Secret Santa exchange among everyone living at Hilltop, something meant to lighten the mood with the war firmly in the past.

Daryl hadn’t expected to participate. He isn’t really part of Hilltop. He’s more like an asteroid belt orbiting its edges, occasionally crashing into it but not really fully a part. Which is why when Maggie comes at him with the jar, he frowns at her and crosses his arms.

“Ain’t really big on Christmas,” he says. And it’s true. Christmases with the Dixon family tended to end in screaming matches between multiple family members, in trips to the ER or police being called or both. Hell, sometimes there were full out brawls on the lawn at his Uncle Jess’s house. It’s not a holiday he associates with peace and fond memories, that’s for damn sure.

“It’s not really Christmas." Maggie smiles at him, and the tone of her voice says she’ll have her way by the end of this argument, if their conversation can be even called that.

“I don’t even know half these damn people,” Daryl grumbles, already fitting his hand into the clear glass like it might close around his wrist and cut it clean off. He probably wouldn't mind a gift exchange so much if he was with his own people where'd he'd at least have some gift ideas, but he’s still learning names here. He doesn’t want to be the guy who shows up with the apocalypse equivalent of a waffle iron.

He picks the first name his fingers brush, plucking it out and unfurling it. And then he’s even more damn grumpy.

“I’m drawin again,” he says, already refolding it. But Maggie snatches the jar back immediately.

“You most certainly are not.” She’s gone before Daryl can even open his mouth to protest. Grumbling something about how the Grinch was right, he shoves the paper in his pocket and goes back to splitting firewood.

* * *

The problem with drawing Jesus’s name isn’t that Daryl doesn’t know what to get him. It’s that it makes him painfully aware that he knows  _exactly_  what to get him. Or well, not exactly, since he knows options are limited and he'll have to take what he can find. But he has a ton of ideas.

Why the fuck does he have so many ideas?

In retrospect, he’d rather have gotten a name he barely knows. ‘Be careful what you wish for’ and all that shit.

“Hey, Daryl?”

He turns and finds Enid, approaching him with a look that's timid but not really afraid.

“Yeah?”

“I was wondering if you’d take me out,” she says, half-smiling, still not sure if Daryl will agree. “You know, Christmas shopping.”

He looks off toward the gate. Some part of him thinks he should say no. The walkers have gone down in number with all the communities patrolling the trade routes, but they’re still out there. And it seems silly to risk their necks for gifts.

On the other hand, he needs to shop too, because he knows he’ll never hear the end of it from Maggie if he shows up to the gift exchange empty-handed (or skips it altogether).

“Fine,” he says.

Enid’s half-smile spreads across her face and she throws her arms around him. Squirming, Daryl allows a full two seconds of contact before he pulls away.

“Go grab your shit,” he says. “Meet me at the gate in twenty.”

Grinning at him, Enid turns and jogs off toward Barrington.

* * *

They’re halfway to the nearest D.C. suburb when Enid starts trying to make conversation.

“What’d you do before all this?” she asks. “I’ve always kind of wondered.”

“Contract killer,” Daryl mumbles. He pushes back the memories of the last time a kid started asking him questions like this. He tells the more anxious part of his brain screaming that it’s some kind of omen to shut the hell up, because omens don’t exist and he will not let a damn thing happen to her on his life. Carl (and Maggie) would both hate him forever if he did.

“Daryl, I’m serious,” she says.

“Honestly wasn’t much of anything,” he admits. “Still ain’t.”

“That’s not true. A lot of us wouldn’t be here without you.” She leans the seat back and throws her feet up on the dash. “We all think you’re something. I do, Maggie, J-” She falters. “A lot of us.”

Daryl grunts a response. The car falls quiet, Enid hitting play on the CD player to see if anything got left inside. When nothing happens, she settles back into her seat and hums quietly for a while, watching the trees go by before they give way to buildings.

Daryl hits the blinker by habit and turns left into a small strip mall, navigating around abandoned cars to pull up in front of an old Best Buy. He doesn’t park yet, letting the car idle in front of the store.

“Alright, here’s the rules,” he says, turning to her with the most stern look he can muster. “We stick together. Even if a store looks empty, we don’t go anywhere out of each other’s line of sight. You got it?”

“Okay,” she agrees.

“Any idea what you wanna get ‘em?”

“There’s a Bed, Bath and Beyond down there. I think I can probably find something,” she says. “I  don’t know her that well, but I wanted it to be nice.”

Daryl eases the car down the line of storefronts until they find the one in question. He doesn’t bother pulling into a parking space, throwing it in park and killing the engine right there on the striped crosswalk. They pull their coats tighter and get out. 

The store has clearly already been breached at one point or another, a slight gap in once-automatic sliding glass giving it away. Enid seems ready to dive right in, wedging her hands in between to pry them open before Daryl stops her with a hand on her shoulder.

“Slow down, cowgirl,” he says, gently pulling her back. And then he bangs on the glass and waits, counting off thirty second increments in his head. He doesn’t help her pry the doors open until it’s been a full five minutes of banging and counting and shivering. It seems the store is empty though, probably cleared by the people who left the doors slightly ajar.

Sunlight doesn’t stretch far back from the glass storefront, the light turning into harder and harder shadows the deeper they go. Flashlights click on. Enid searches the shelves, some barer than others, her face screwed up in quiet concentration while she considers each potential gift. Daryl follows, crossbow ready to go at any moment. And though his focus is on having Enid’s back so she can pick out a gift, he scans the aisles a little too, though he’d never really expected anything at Bed, Bath and Beyond to speak to him anyway.

Sure, Jesus could  _use_  a big fluffy towel or a nice set of glass mixing bowls. But they aren’t going to… what, exactly? Make him smile? Make him look at Daryl with bright blue eyes on “Christmas” Day? Why the fuck does Daryl even care if Jesus’s eyes light up when he unwraps his gift from him?

He doesn’t, he tells himself. He doesn’t care at all.

He almost believes it.

He blinks and follows Enid deeper into the store, past a display of electric foot massagers and massaging chair rests.

In the end, she chooses a couple candles, a nice quilt and some bathroom accessories. Daryl quietly escorts her out of the store and back to the car, keeping his eyes up on their surroundings while she puts things in the backseat. At the edge of the parking lot, his eyes fall on a dozen or so walkers, shambling on the snow-covered curb. 

They’re too far away to deal with at the moment, but he knows the slam of the car door and the engine might attract their attention. He stops Enid with a single palm in the air, watching her freeze and turn.

“You can close it, just don’t slam it.” She delicately shuts the door, bumping it with her hip. 

“Where did you wanna go? We can walk.” Her hand sits on her knife, poised and ready. "Maybe they'll wander off by the time we're done." 

Daryl weighs the options. He’d really wanted the car close at all times in case they needed to make a quick getaway, but a dozen walkers is a lot to deal with for two people, especially out in the open where they can easily get surrounded.  

He nods and jerks his head. Getting the message, Enid goes in front of him where he can keep an eye on her, glancing back at the walkers the whole time to see if any have turned. So far, so good.

The bookstore has already been breached too, one glass door fully shattered. He and Enid crunch through it, crouching under the metal bar labeled “push” on the inside. Daryl holds her back, scanning the shadows from shelf to shelf then clicking on his flashlight beam to shine it inside.

There’s a body on the floor, putrefying and leaking rot that would have had both of them puking once. But they’re both used to it now.

“I’m gonna sit right here,” Enid says, hopping up on the counter at the front of the store before adding, “if that’s okay.”

Daryl shines his flashlight over the side. There’s another body, so old it's mostly bones and scraps of fabric, but otherwise it’s clean. There’s no way for anyone to sneak up on her either. Plus, the store is small enough he’ll be able to see her anywhere in it, and he likes the idea of getting to shop for Jesus privately.

“Keep an eye on things out there. Anything or anyone gets close, shine your flashlight at me.”

Enid nods and leans over the edge, plucking a chocolate bar out of display box.  

“If you find any comics… He likes  _Punisher_  and  _Spiderman_.”

Daryl nods back, the corner of one lip twitching. Why not? He’s sure Carl wouldn’t mind a Christmas present even if it might be a little late. Plus he’s happy they’ve found some kind of happiness and normalcy with each other, even if nothing about the world is normal anymore. If all it takes is a few comic books to support that, then he’ll grab a few comic books.

Jesus likes comics too. Daryl knows that because he overheard him and Kal talking about  _X-Men_ once, both discussing how they’d fallen in love with it because they’d felt like outsiders for different reasons.

Maybe he’ll throw an  _X-Men_  comic in with whatever else he grabs

Row by row, he goes, shining the flashlight to read the sections on the shelves. He sure and shit isn’t gonna find anything for Jesus in the Early Readers section, though he maybe shoves a book with built in finger puppets in his backpack for someone else he knows.

He's near the back corner when he finds what he was looking for, rubbing dust off the “poetry” placard with his thumb even though he could read it just fine.

He remembers the first time he ever set foot in Jesus’s trailer after he escaped Sanctuary, how he'd become vaguely aware of the makeshift bookshelf as part of his surroundings. He hadn’t noticed the titles then. He’d been too tired, still physically shaking from not having enough food or water for days on end. He'd pretty much slid down onto the couch and watched Jesus pull out canned soup. He’d had to mostly tip it into Daryl’s mouth, because as soon as the adrenaline of his escape ran out, he’d been a complete mess who couldn’t even sit up without help.

It was there on the couch as soup and water settled that he first noticed some of the books, and Daryl had only recognized Poe among the names, but things like “collected poetry” and “the poems of” running down the spines told him exactly what Jesus’s preferred form of literature was.

Jesus had fussed over Daryl for a day and a half on that couch, and Daryl had fussed back in a completely different way. He’d grumbled things about how he could do shit himself even though his limbs were unreliable jelly every time he so much as got up to take a piss. He’d spit back at him about that stupid truck in the bottom of that pond like it still remotely mattered.

Anything was better than admitting that he was more angry at the way every look and every touch set his stomach soaring and plummeting and soaring and plummeting. A constant loop-de-loop that left Daryl wanting to claw at it until he ripped it out.

He thumbs over a leather-bound book with gold-stamped letters that shimmer under the beam of his flashlight.  _The Complete Works of Robert Frost._  He picks it up and puts it in his backpack and then grabs at more. He doesn’t know the names, doesn’t know who Jesus might like or not like. He recognizes a few from the books he already has avoids those while he grabs at Yeats and Naruda and Rankine and Forché. He grabs collections of best-loved poems and British poets, not stopping until the backpack feels like a bag of bricks. 

He finds the comics section next, snatching up titles to fulfill Enid’s request, throwing a glance back at her where she still seems to be savoring her stale chocolate bar. Then he grabs a single  _X-Men_ and slips it into his bag.

The last thing he does on the way out is pick up two rolls of pink and blue polka-dotted wrapping paper on an end cap. It’s not the wrapping paper he might have chosen if he’d chosen any at all, but they need something and this will work just fine.

When he approaches, Enid hops down off the counter, stooping to pick up the display box of chocolate bars like she intends to bring it with them. Daryl rolls his eyes, his mouth twitching again, and then he peers out of busted door, relieved when it seems the mini-herd has moved on.

There are still two walkers outside though between them and the car. Daryl shoots one and lets Enid have the other, ready to back her up at a moment’s notice but fully aware that she can fend for herself and should be allowed to stay sharp. She takes it out with a single jab to the eye, one arm still holding her chocolate.

He feels a little proud, gently cuffing her on the shoulder before they walk on to the car, his heavy pack and the wrapping paper thrown in the backseat.

They’re quiet at first, especially when they drive past the mini-herd, which has swelled to around twenty dead, heads and fetid arms reaching. Feet attempt to follow them until they’re just pinpricks in the rearview.

“So what’d you get Jesus?” Enid finally asks, as buildings give way to trees again.

“I...” Daryl stops, his brow furrowing. “How’d you know I had Jesus?”

“Oh.” Enid goes quiet. “I mean… no one else I asked had him, so I guess I assumed.”  

“Mhm.”

“Well?”

“Books,” he answers, giving her no more detail than that.

They don’t talk again until they’re back at Hilltop with Eduardo waving them in through the gates in between breathing on his hands.

The first thing out of Enid’s mouth is a quiet, “oh shit.”

There’s not enough panic to it for Daryl to panic too, but he looks around anyway.

“What?” he finally asks, at a loss because nothing looks out of the ordinary to him. 

“It’s Maria,” Enid whispers. “I’m her Secret Santa.”

Daryl looks around again. Which fucking one is Maria again? It doesn’t matter, he decides.

“Even if she sees 'em, she ain’t gonna know they’re for her.”

“Just pull closer to the house, please,” Enid says, turning around to look at people manning the gate behind them. Daryl figures that Maria is the one with the red mittens snuggling deeper into her parka. She’s not even giving them another glance, more focused on pulling her hood tighter to guard against the wind.

He slowly putters the car up to the front of Barrington house anyway and helps her unload it. Enid throws backwards glances at the gate the whole short walk inside.

 

* * *

Christmas in Hilltop gets pushed back. Two days after their little shopping trip, a snowstorm hits. Two of their own get caught outside the gates—Kal and Amy. They quietly agree they can’t have Christmas until they both come back.

And they do, trudging through the gates in layers of blankets cut into ponchos, with makeshift snowshoes in the form of tennis rackets duct taped to their feet.

They’re cold and hungry, but they’re alive.

* * *

Everything in Hilltop stops for holiday festivities. Almost anyway. The blacksmith stops working. Those tending the gardens through the winter lay down their tools. Any scheduled runs or patrols between Hilltop and the other communities are pushed back a day. The only work that continues is tending the animals and watching the gate.

Maggie has the bright idea to split the day’s celebrations in two so that people can change shifts. She wants everyone to be able to participate.

She splits everyone up according to the Secret Santa exchange, inviting some to lunch and some to dinner. Daryl thinks it’s funny that he can’t remember telling her which name he drew, but knowing Maggie she caught it when he unrolled the paper and didn’t need to ask.

Christmas dinner is delicious if less indulgent than it might have been back when. There’s fresh chicken and yams, homemade bread, and a few casseroles.

He mostly eats without talking, listening to the joyful hum of conversation around him. He knows it won’t last, but it's nice to have a good day thrown into the mix here and there. It's nice to know what they're fighting for when they have to fight. 

Down the table, Eduardo tells a silly joke about reindeer that feels like it got pulled right off the back of a Laffy Taffy wrapper.

Still, Daryl’s lips twitch, and he’s a little mad that he even finds it funny because it's so damn stupid. 

Smiling in spite of himself, he looks up and finds Jesus across the table, watching him, blue eyes light with amusement. Daryl only chokes on his water a little.

* * *

After dinner, they gather in another room, most of them forced to sit on the floor facing a large freshly cut pine covered in random decorations. There are old faded glass balls probably pulled out of storage in the house. There are handmade ornaments formed out of popsicle sticks and pinecones. Despite the thrown-together look of it, Daryl thinks it looks pretty nice. 

Enid comes in and sets the stack of books in his lap before plopping down next to him without a word. She'd wrapped them as a thank you and held onto them for him so they wouldn't be right under Jesus's nose. He decides he likes her and mentally wedges her between Maggie and Aaron on the list of people he doesn't mind being around. 

“Everybody try to get in rows please,” Maggie says. “It’ll be easier that way.”

Everyone scoots into lines. Then they go section by section, taking turns walking their gifts to their proper recipient. Jesus comes to Daryl before he can go to him, a brown paper sack bursting with colorful paper outstretched in his hand.

“Seriously?” Daryl asks.

“I don’t really know how to react to that,” he says.

“No, I didn't mean... Just here.” Daryl pushes the stack of books into his hands. 

“Oh.” And Jesus sits down right in front of him, seemingly unconcerned about ruining the rows. It doesn’t matter anyway though, because as soon as they’ve all gone, the rows are ruined anyway. Enid seems to have moved beside Amy. The person who'd been to Daryl's left is way up near the tree. 

“Go ahead,” Maggie says.

Daryl looks around and finds people starting to rip into paper or bags. A few are even untying cloth tied with twine. No one is looking at him or Jesus, and he feels like they’re alone despite being in the middle of a sea of people. An island to themselves. He becomes acutely aware that their knees are touching.

“Would you like to go first?” Jesus asks, like they have their own rules or something because they somehow drew each other.

“Yeah, okay,” Daryl says, pulling the tissue paper out of the bag. There are two things inside. One is a really nice ratchet set, a whole one that makes it clear Jesus must have done some shopping of his own. It’ll come in handy when he works on cars and bikes, and that makes it thoughtful enough. But the other gift in the sack makes Daryl feel like the entire room has fallen away around them. They're satellites drifting through the void. 

How the hell did Jesus even…?

Carefully, like it’ll break if Daryl does more than gently grasp the edges of the picture frame, he pulls out a framed drawing. And he'd known Jesus could draw, has seen him do it tons, even considered picking up art supplies over poetry books. But knowing he had the skill set still doesn’t explain _this_.

“How?” Daryl’s eyes burn with the threat of tears. He never thought he’d see his brother’s face again in this lifetime. Never.

“Rick,” Jesus says simply. “I had patrol duty anyway so I stopped in. Does it look right?”  

Daryl nods, because opening his mouth feels too dangerous.

“I’m going to open mine now,” Jesus says. No, not Jesus. Paul. Paul is the name he signed at the bottom of the artwork. Paul Rovia. Daryl thumbs over the elegant signature, stares at Merle’s eyes forever captured in mid-smile. This must have taken hours between Rick describing him and Paul changing this and that until it was right, just right, based on Rick's memory. 

“No,” Daryl says hoarsely, reaching out and grabbing Paul’s hand. Because suddenly a bunch of poetry doesn’t feel like enough. How the fuck could it ever be enough?

“Why not?”

“I… You need more,” Daryl says. He realizes he’s still holding Paul’s hand and lets go.

“I’m sure I’ll like it,” Paul says. “It’s from you.”

Still holding onto the framed drawing like it’s the most precious thing in the whole world, Daryl watches him untie the bow and unwrap the first book. It’s Yeats. The others follow. And God his eyes light up every time but the random interjection of the X-Men comic has him beaming. Fucking beaming.

And suddenly Daryl’s overwhelmed with the need to kiss the corner of his smile. But he can’t and he won’t, so he shifts and lets his knee push into Paul’s with just a little more pressure. He asks himself when and how the fuck he got to the point where he wants to kiss Paul 'Jesus' Rovia, searching back through every memory from that day in the field to breakfast that morning. 

Recognition pours over him in a wave and the room spins on its axis while blue eyes wander over book covers, while slender thumbs slip and slide through pages. 

Daryl looks down at the drawing and realizes the building tightness in his chest isn’t just because of Merle’s face.

Bright blue eyes find his and all Daryl can think is  _oh no_.

“This is incredible, Daryl,” Paul says, reaching over to rest a hand on his knee. Daryl’s heart sputters and he swears for a second it stops completely.

_Oh. no._

Paul looks down at the open book in his lap. And he reads quietly, his voice cutting through the murmurs of everyone around them.

“ _I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body_.” Paul glances up at Daryl, his finger following along with the text. And he could just be reading, he could be, but God that one little glance has Daryl _reeling_.

“ _I love you without knowing how or when or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way._ ” Paul closes the book and brushes over the cover, like this was a simple fucking poetry reading in a library or some shit.

Like he didn’t just make every single one of Daryl’s internal organs fucking rearrange themselves.

His eyes meet Daryl’s again and suddenly Daryl’s lunging forward, intent on closing the distance between them before he remembers half of Hilltop is also in the room with them. He freezes, his whole body shaking. What the actual fuck is he doing? 

Everything inside of him is uncomfortably alive.

He starts to lean back, but Paul’s hands leave the leather cover of the book and find his jaw, fingertips curling around the back of his neck. Pale pink lips move closer and closer until it makes Daryl’s eyes throb to try and keep looking at them. He pushes them shut and whimpers quietly when Paul’s lips touch his.

It’s soft, so soft. Like the glow of a campfire in the distance, yellow light diffusing into the black night. He doesn’t linger, doesn’t try to make the kiss something deeper and more profound there in a room full of people. But even that brief press of lips is profound enough.

Because Daryl knows his world has just changed in a way he can never take back.

Because he realizes he doesn’t even want to take it back. That he can’t fathom a time he ever will.

Paul reaches for his hand, gently clasping it in Daryl’s lap. Daryl finally looks up at someone other than the man in front of him and finds Enid smiling at him. She seems to have a new sweater, a hand-knit hoodie with a big HT on it. She gives him a thumbs up.

He finds Maggie next, smiling over baby clothes and a soft homemade quilt. She smiles at him too, her eyes saying she saw exactly what just happened between him and Paul. Daryl’s ears feel a little warmer than usual.

“You ready to go?” Daryl asks, because suddenly the tight space of Paul’s trailer is the only place in the world he wants to be. Paul nods, and they stack the books in the bag Daryl’s gifts came in. 

They’re nearly out of Barrington house before Daryl mutters, “wait a damn minute.”

“What?”

“I’ll be back,” he says, putting the bag of gifts into Paul’s arms.

Then he turns around and marches back into the room they just left, right up to Maggie.

“You did this,” Daryl says. Demands, even.

“I’m sorry?”

“You rigged the damn Secret Santa.” It had taken him only a second—a second of thinking about all the wonderful coincidences that had come together to culminate in that soft kiss and all the things that would follow it—to realize that they weren’t coincidences at all.

Maggie wouldn’t let him re-draw because all the names in that damn jar had said “Jesus.” She didn't need to ask who he'd drawn, because he'd only had the one option. And Enid had asked him what he was getting Paul because she was in on it.   
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, but she’s smiling in a way that says she knows exactly what he’s fucking talking about. “And if I did, well, someone had to.”

“Not gonna fess up, huh?” he asks, gently nudging her shoe with his.

“Fess up to what?” she asks innocently. And Daryl huffs and walks away shaking his head, all the way back to Paul who lights up all over again the second he sees him.

“Confronting Maggie about playing matchmaker?” he asks casually. 

“You figure it out too?” Daryl takes the bag back, handling it delicately because the drawing of his brother is on the very top of the stack.

“When you handed me your gift, it all kind of fell into place,” Paul says.

“And Enid was in on it, the little shit.”

Paul opens the door and cold floods over Daryl’s skin, but he knows it won’t last more than the few seconds it takes them to walk back to the trailer. He sucks it up and walks, not minding at all when his and Paul’s shoulders bump together along the way.

Inside, he helps Paul fit the new books onto his shelf. Paul points out that there’s already a nail in the wall for Daryl’s gift, and Daryl hangs it up, letting his eyes flutter shut when hands slip around his middle from behind.

Paul is shorter than him, which means he gets a forehead resting between his shoulder blades. Daryl allows it, likes it even, staying still until he lets go. Or until he loosens his grip anyway, allowing Daryl to turn around within the circle of his arms.

The second they’re face to face, everything in Daryl goes haywire again. He nearly chokes on the air in the room, and he slips out of Paul's arms and pushes past him just to catch his breath, sinking down on the couch and inhaling deeply.

“Sorry,” he says. “Ain’t you. Well it is, but it ain't.”

“If that was too close or too much...”

“It wasn't,” Daryl says. “I just...”

Paul sits down beside him, close enough for their bodies to touch along the edges. And that makes Daryl’s heart skip too, but more manageably.

“You what?” Paul asks softly.

“Sometimes I look at those damn eyes of yours and forget to breathe,” Daryl admits. And his ears feel warm again. And when Paul doesn’t answer, he turns and finds him staring. As prophesied, his lungs contract and expel their contents immediately.

Slim calloused fingers find Daryl's chin and tip his face. Paul leans in and in and in, and Daryl can feel his own pulse hammering arrhythmically in his throat, slowing and speeding wildly with every inch of space that disappears between them. 

“I would be willing to spend an awful long time helping you remember.”

Paul kisses him for the second time. This time, it's long instead of brief, deep instead of soft. Lips part and Daryl lets Paul taste the inside of his mouth. He tastes his too, trying to memorize the way this feels, though he knows anything imprinted on his brain will only be an echo of what it really means to kiss Paul Rovia. To love him.

But it doesn’t matter, because this won’t be the last. No day is guaranteed for any of them, but Daryl feels safe enough assuming that they’ll kiss again before this one is over.

And again.

_And again._

**Author's Note:**

> Ask me about my pet rocks at DarylDixonGrimes on Tumblr.


End file.
